• Lec Cruz, The Scene, 2023, Oil on canvas, 137.16 x 109.22 cm
  • Lec Cruz, A Cliff in Dover, 2023, Oil on canvas, 152.4 x 132.08 cm
  • Lec Cruz, Test Shot, 2023, Oil on canvas, 132.08 x 152.4 cm
  • Lec Cruz, The End Scene, 2023, Oil on canvas, 137.16 x 109.22 cm
  • Lec Cruz, The Take, 2023, Oil on canvas, 137.16 x 109.22 cm
  • Lec Cruz, The Cut, 2023, Oil on canvas, 137.16 x 109.22 cm
EXHIBITION

Old Lenses, New Frames

26 July – 30 September 2023

Yavuz Gallery is excited to announce Old Lenses, New Frames, an online exhibition by Filipino artist, Lec Cruz.

Cruz is known for his hypnotic and often tranquil dreamscapes with a macabre quality to his works. This body of work is existential and symbolic in nature – languid every day scenes are reposed and altered into unsettling imagery that fuses animate and inanimate objects with vibrant colours and thick application of paint. In conceptualising Old Lenses, New Frames, Cruz took cues from history, personal experiences, and utopic ideals to materialise unspoken stories and temporality.

“The familiarity and command to these compositional ideas was jolted with an ongoing ‘itch’ that I need to pursue, to dive in to. If art is a city filled with trenches of streets and walkways to choose from, I have grown particularly interested in an alley, to pass through and investigate every crevice in it, but this time I needed to crawl up its walls to find a different view.”

With the assistance of Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) generators, his gestural stokes and mark-markings are tools to interrupt the stillness and solitude within his compositions. The artist, who is based in Manila, Philippines, elaborates “Abstraction has always been part of an end goal, but my reverence to it stops me from attempting to create until (my) experimentation with A.I. image generation. […] they expand the conversation with the viewers without the pretences of figuration.”

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Lec Cruz’s (b. 1982) practice revolves around the intersection of philosophy, history and literature, exploring themes relating to social, personal and ideological concerns. In his surreal paintings, Cruz creates complex mind landscapes: labyrinths and unsolvable problems to be experienced, solved, and meditated upon. The works are a re-creation of the artist’s own identity and how he imagines others – a personal and social profile, with its resulting works depicting observations and introspection of the mundane, trivial, and often overlooked aspect of our society.